Debt and the Global Financial Crisis

Ann Pettifor is one of those rare individuals who makes economics accessible to a wide audience. She is best known for her work as co-founder of Jubilee 2000, the global campaign for cancellation of the debts of the poorest countries. Clearly expressed ideas and mobilisation were at the heart of a successful campaign that led the G8 group of the world's most powerful nations to agree to write off about $100 billion in third world debt for about 35 countries at the Cologne G8 Summit in 1999. She says, "after six years our campaign was in 60 countries around the world and it mobilised the biggest petition in history to take to the UN" and she had some powerful allies in Pope John Paul II, Bono, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.

Today, Ann Pettifor is executive director of London-based Advocacy International which provides advice to governments and organisations on international finance and sustainable development. She recently visited Adelaide on a national tour talking about her work as part of a group that prepared the influential A Green New Deal report. In it she and her co-authors outline a plan for tackling what they describe as the "triple crunch of the credit crisis, climate change and high oil prices". Pettifor knows more than most that we are at a critical juncture in history, a time when great hardship has been generated by rampant and destructive finance sector speculation fuelled by a flawed global financial system.

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